M is for Marx . . . Marching in Asia

I don't know where to look at the moment, or what to shoot! I'm like a kid in a sweet shop, every box I open either has old friends, things I'd forgotten, stuff that came in as I was packing up or things which need to be combined with the stuff that's come-in since, this is a combining lot.

The loose Marx Miniature Masterpiece stuff outgrew their box years ago and looking for a line to draw I put all the WWII and medieval (? Me too?) in a new box, although if that pairing wasn't bad enough I also put all the gun teams in with them, despite the fact that the rest of the ACW (including the Limber crews) stayed with the Wild West, jungle, Disney, light brigade et al in the old box?

Anyway the old box ended-up here, so we've had dips in it for Disney oddities and Wild West Ri-Toy comparisons in the last few years, but in cross-loading the ones for the other box I shot these.

The Japanese - we have looked at them against the Rado ones I think, but here are my four main colour variations, the darkest ones (top row) are as common as the others, but seem to be confined to eight poses (I forgot to shoot one - the clubbing guy), so it may be that part of the tool was blanked-off for a specific order, maybe the smaller window boxes? The other three; yellower, paler and greyer have all the poses.

These are all soft polyethylene and the green, red and white paint on the bottom row is 'previous owner-applied'.

Close-up to show the colour variation more clearly; and also the variation in paint between batches/orders/contracts.

On the left are the two types of base marking found with these figures, some having the larger Marx stamp, others a smaller stamp and balancing 'blank' - as per the cake-decorating figures the other day - believed to be mould-release pin marks.

On the right are my entire collection of hard polystyrene plastic Japanese! It's funny, with the GI's I have a large bag of hard plastic, a much smaller bag of soft plastic and only one unpainted figure from the late window boxes, yet with the Japanese it seems to be the complete opposite?

I don't think there is any significance to that; like the Tinykins/Disneykins these were much marketed in various configurations and set types/sizes, and the vagaries of Marx's global production will mean different territories got different stock when it was ready/they needed it and from whichever factory was slated to have the tools at that time, in whatever material they were running!

However . . . it's annoying, because the US got lots of the hard plastic batch for the various sizes of their Iwo Jima boxed sets, and they have extra poses; second tool! Mine are all damaged, the additional poses are on the top row but I don't know how many of them there are to find, for the longest time I thought I was only looking for a third officer (drawing his sword), then these three turned-up!

When the Japanese went home the vacuum left while the various colonies waited for their French and Dutch [&etc.], administrations to return was filled by a strange temporary administration made of the odd British colonial who was kicking about, US military personnel, trusted members of the out-going Japanese forces and any resistance fighters or local 'figures of standing', along with anyone else who thought they could administer (and possibly some fledgling UN personnel?).

Anyway - it was all very much a mess of an ad-hoc, buggers-muddle and the locals got used to a bit of autonomy, so when the French or Dutch, Portuguese or even the Brit's returned they found they were no longer welcome in someone else's country - not that they ever really had been, just that the 'Go homes' were louder and more forthright!

I know I've plugged them before here and elsewhere on the Wibbly Wobbly Way, but anyone who wants a concise account of France's loss of 'Indo-China' would be well advised to read Bernard Fall's Street Without Joy (incidecently, mentioned in the Long Grey Line I think (or Chikenhawk) as being read by US junior officers in Vietnam a few years later, trying to make sense of their own Kafkaesque situation), while his Hell in a Very Small Place is a day-by-day, blow-by-blow, almost (and at times) shell-by-shell account of the final unnecessary sacrifice at Dein Bien Phu, in part from the mouths of the survivors - on both sides - who he managed to track down years later.

Marx - as we saw briefly the other day - visited the conflict, in the height of the conflict, the Daily Mail said nothing!

The top row is all marked 'Made In Hong Kong' the lower rows are 'Made In Taiwan' and Taiwanese colour variations, the Taiwan sourced figures seem commoner over here, but I wouldn't say I have large samples of either. The schemes are the same from batch to batch but there is variation with red/orange, various shades and hues of blues and a move through brown to grey.

They go very well with the slightly-smaller scaled Japanese celluloid tourist keepsakes I've been collecting as well as those Villagers we looked at - and here we see three Viet Cong running past a wagon while elsewhere one of their comrades directs local peasants away to safety while the Ride of the Valkeries echo's over their 'Ville' mingling with the Chop-Chop of the Hughes Aircraft Corporation!

The Hong Kong marking is to the left of each pair, the Taiwan to the right; they should be readable if you click on the image. The Taiwan cartouche has a slight step or shoulder round the outer ring, suggesting they are the later version, with a slight re-tooling to allow for different stamps which probably doubled-up in service as release-pins, being interchangeable rods running through the tool-block.